Bye Bye Birdie

• Original Broadway Production (1960)
  New York, NY
• First National Tour (1961)
• London Production (1961)
  London, England
• Second National Tour (1961)
• Music Fair Circuit Production (1962)
• Film Version (1963)
• Touring Revival (1991)
• Non-Equity Tour (1993)
• Television Production (1995)
• Encores! Concert (2004)
  New York, NY
• Broadway Revival (2009)
  New York, NY
• Television Production (2017) [cancelled]

Click on the title for info on the song.

Original score

• An English Teacher
• The Telephone Hour
• How Lovely to Be a Woman
• We Love You Conrad!
• Put on a Happy Face
• Normal American Boy
  • aka A Healthy, Normal American Boy [no note]
• One Boy
  • aka One Girl [no note]
• Honestly Sincere
• Hymn for a Sunday Evening
• How to Kill a Man Ballet
  • aka Ballet: How to Kill a Man [no note]
• One Last Kiss
• Prologue: The World at Large
  • aka Prologue to Act 2 [no note]
  • aka The World at Large [no note]
• What Did I Ever See in Him?
• A Lot of Livin' to Do
• Kids
• Baby, Talk to Me
  • aka Talk to Me [no note]
• Shriners' Ballet
• Spanish Rose
• Rosie

Added to film version

• Bye Bye Birdie

Added to and later cut from 1991 Tour

• Older and Wiser
• All Woman

Added to 1991 tour

• A Giant Step
• He's Mine

Added to 1995 Television Movie

• A Mother Doesn't Matter Anymore
• Let's Settle Down

• Composer Demo [audio]

Inspired by the uproar created when Elvis Presley got his Army draft notice in 1957.

Although some sources state that Carol Haney and Eydie Gormé both turned down the role of Rose before it was somewhat reconceived and offered to Chita Rivera, the truth may be a bit more complex. Charles Strouse has discussed several times what happened Haney. One time was in an interview posted at Rob Weiner-Kendt's blog The Wicked Stage.

Rob Weiner-Kendt: I heard a story that Carol Haney was originally going to play the part of Rosie, later played by Chita Rivera, and that her character was originally Polish. So was there a song called "Polish Rose" that you had to change to "Spanish Rose"?

Charles Strouse: It was more than a song. Originally, when the story was written by Lee [Adams] and Mike [Stewart] and me, the girl, Rosie, was Polish, and every joke that the mother made was about Poles, which actually was kind of fashionably unfashionable then—there were all kinds of dumb Polish jokes. And Carol got sick. She was kind of a bad-luck girl—a wonderful performer who had a certain lack of stability in her life. The first day that Lee and Gower Champion and Mike came down to her apartment to hear her sing—I had taught her about four songs—she suddenly lost her voice. And we all sat around for about a half-hour, until it became embarrassing, because everybody knew there was a problem we couldn't possibly touch at that moment. I remember Gower saying "We'll talk later," and we all knew it wasn't going to happen.

As for Eydie Gormé, she became pregnant, effectively ending her availability.

• Let's Go Steady (working title)